![]() You can't play it on your Xbox, you can't play it on your phone. "Being able to rally with your friends - drink beer and play pinball. The way they look, the way they sound," Rich tells me. In between turns, I ask him why pinball appeals to him. Yet he's managed to slow it down into an activity of almost zen-like concentration. I've always thought of pinball as a game of breakneck speed, of distracting lights and noises. He gently rocks the machine at just the right moments, jockeying the ball between the two flippers as he carefully considers his next move. Rich puts some credits on an early '90s machine titled Game Show, in which you score points and collect "fabulous prizes" - a new car, a Caribbean vacation, a color TV. The place has eight operating pinball cabinets, ranging from a 1975 Western shootout called Fast Draw to the 1996 billiards game Breakshot. That's why I set off on a freezing Wednesday afternoon to meet up with pinball fanatic Bryce Rich at the downtown bar Berserk. But pinball is not so easily replicated, and unless you know somebody with their own machine, you have to seek it out to play it. ![]() Of course, lots of old-school video games have been recreated for contemporary gamers: Look no further than the popular Nintendo Classic toys, preloaded with a selection of 8-bit titles from the '90s, or the online emulators that allow you to download retro games to your computer in seconds. It's hardly a world-shifting movement, but consider that there are more active pinball manufacturers in 2020 than there were in 2010. It's fuzzy, neon-tinged memories like this that have no doubt inspired pinball's resurgence in recent years, as the generations who grew up during the arcade boom (and its eventual bust) or witnessed the game's unlikely 1990s renaissance are rediscovering its unusual charms. Surely that was the sign that you were a capital-A Adult. When the adolescent boy in the 1988 comedy Big transformed into adult Tom Hanks, I was less impressed by his beautiful Manhattan loft than the pinball machine he had in there. Pinball seemed to me like a grown-up game, and not just because you had to stand on your tiptoes to play it. I've been trying to remember more details about this particular pinball machine for years, but it has been shoved into a corner of my memory, its title covered by a layer of dust and cobwebs. But I was nonetheless hypnotized by this contraption - its flashing rainbow of colors, its intergalactic sound effects, its weird cast of characters. I'd plug that machine with a fistful of quarters, but I don't think I ever got more than a few seconds on each credit, furiously smashing the buttons as the balls sailed right past my flippers and into oblivion. There was a drawer in the restaurant's back office with a Styrofoam cup that magically replenished itself with coins. On the side of the machine's cabinet was a red-and-yellow egg-shaped robot, its spindly mechanical arms frozen in a comical shrug. I remember marveling at the artwork on the machine's back panel - a femme android floated in the void of space, striking a regal, balletic pose as menacing cyborg hands with pinball flippers for fingers enveloped her, shooting electricity into the cosmos. It sat in the game room of the pizza parlor that my grandmother owned, and I sometimes had it to myself in the hours before the restaurant opened. I had my own childhood pinball machine, and its silver spheres have been bouncing off the bumpers of my brain for years. ![]() Or, if you were lucky, you had a friend whose parents bought one for their den, and you could play it all afternoon without ever having to put a single quarter into it. Maybe it was glittering in the back corner of the neighborhood arcade, or pinging and clanging over the din of the local tavern. Ask any of them, and they'll tell you about it. Marcus Schmick (left) and Bryce Rich play during a recent tournament for Berserk's pinball league.Įvery serious pinball player remembers their first machine. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |